Magnolia Scents
by snowdropsinwinter
Summary: Death strangely refuses Hitomi, yet it life denies her too. Ten years later Hitomi believes that her journey was only a childhood dream. With her cards burnt and diary shred, she tries to save herself from life. But life does not want to let her go yet.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Escaflowne, and any idea or concept affiliated with it ,does not belong to me.

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**"Magnolia Scents"**

A cold breeze ruffled the leaves and grass on the icy moist floor of the green hill. The grass felt cold and lonely, but at the same time alive and refreshing, waking a wandering girl up to the dawning world around her as the sun bathed the city beneath in matted shades of pelican pink and mandarin orange. Hitomi breathed in the pungent breeze, closing her eyes and taking in the unbiased feel of everything around her. How good the world smelled to her. How warm the sun felt on her ivory skin. How fresh the grass was beneath her delicate feet.

Closing her eyes even tighter she took another breath and started to slowly carry her pink feet across the wet, cold grass. One step after another. Further and Further on. Stop. Just as quickly as she had started her feet came to rest. She slowly opened her eyes and looked directly into the blue, white and yellow spots of the sun. Releasing the breath she was holding, she opened her arms and took one last final step. Her feet felt the nothingness of cold, rushing air, trying desperately to find hold upon the breeze. Wind upon wind, breeze over breeze. And suddenly, there was nothing- except darkness.

Just as a warm lulling blanket descended on her mind, a light violently knocked on her eyelids, mercilessly pulling her mind from the darkness that surrounded her. Gradually, with great effort and care, Hitomi's thick black eyelashes struggled to pull the pale eyelids up towards the source of light. Barely succeeding, they struggled until a beam of light touched her eyes. With the same intensity as the light had replaced the blissful darkness, the undeniable fact hit her. She was alive. Alive. Breathing. Thinking. Why did the hungry, roaring waves not eat her body? How could she be lying here? Here? HERE? Where on this earth was here? Where was she? As far as she could remember, there was no grass at the bottom of that hill. Only gray, sharp spears of rocks and great hungry waves, which patiently waited for their next meal.

Knowing that speculations did not help her at all, she made a quick decision, eager for the rapidly swirling thoughts in her head to die away. Die…what an ironic thought.

In one graceful movement Hitomi popped on her feet, her panicked curiosity giving her the unexpected strength.

"Ok…I am standing. Wait! I am STANDING! Standing! Standing!…H… How?"

Slowly she opened her eyes, bringing her long, shaking fingers to the back of her head, running it through the straight hazel strands. She was expecting to feel a ruby, warm sticky substance, but as she held her shaking hands to her face, they were as pale as ever.

"No…No blood?…How?" It was then Hitomi truly looked around her.

This was impossible, unrealistic and plainly ridiculous. She could not be here. She absolutely should not be here and there was no way she could explain how she had woken up, uninjured and most unfortunate of all, absolutely alive, in a forest.

"I…I felt the wind. I felt myself falling, the gravity mercifully sucking me down. I felt it. It was real." But so is this. So is this…

"How?" she whispered again, her voice rapidly faltering.

"I mean, I could have landed on a piece of hill further down" she began again with little strength, as she sat down on the dried, parched grass.

"Someone could have found me and just left me here to be found in turn…".

No, that made no sense. There were no thick, dim forests with long slender trees and thick leathery leaves around that hill.

None at all.

Not even a park. Not even trees like these. Hitomi raised her green eyes towards the sky in wonder, eyeing the looming trees from the dry ground with great discomfort. "I have never seen trees like these" she murmured alarmed. Her waking up in this forest was too strange for her comfort, too unrealistic for her liking and too eerie to be true.

"And yet it is…yet it is."

Too confused and disoriented to ask any more questions and too weak and tired to try to ask them, she lay her form down on the ground, resting her head on the spiky grass.

She was waiting now.

Death had strangely refused her, yet it seemes that life has denied her too. Lying in between existence and nothingness, she looked up towards the trees waiting for the answer to fall down-just as she had.

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Hi Everyone. Thank you very much for reading this. 

If anyone has been wondering...Of course, the story line will progress much faster with the next chapters. Naturally, any story needs background and a steady accumlation of tension to make it interesting.

So...

**PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!**

I really appriciate ideas, corrections, suggestion or anything else that comes to your mind.

Thanks.


	2. Chapter 2

An icy breeze swept through the tall trees, swaying its thick lime leaves back and forth like a frantic bell in an old church. The murmur of the trees, banging against each other in a strange rhythm, beneath the spotless, raven sky, created a strange atmosphere of unrest and foreboding.

A tiny, rough leaf, impatient to leave the restricting society of trees, fell down upon a thin, fragile figure on the grass, resting upon a fan of long, hazel strands. A leaf? This was certainly neither the fate nor the answer Hitomi had been longing for.

Feeling the icy wind and cold whispers, she yet again opened her eyes cautiously to the dark world around her.

"Where…where am I?" she wondered before, almost simultaneously, everything trickled back to her weary and confused mind. She bit her lip in thought before running her wet tongue over the dry, rippled skin of her raspberry lips.

"What if I climb up a tree and try again" she wondered. They were certainly high enough for her dark purpose. But when she glanced at the slender giants, she realized that their snowy barks were just as smooth her ivory skin, making any climbing excursions foolishly impossible.

With nothing else to do, she decided to sit up, relying on her delicate hands to support most of her weight. Absently she smoothed out her ivory, silk dress, before picking out the small leaf from her honeyed strands. So…what happens now?

"I suppose it would be a start to find out where on this merciless earth, I am" she said as she began to walk through the sudden silence, the spiky grass and sharp twigs, painfully digging into her bare soles.

As she continued her way, her mind drifted to emptiness, her pink feet playing a steady, methodical rhythm upon the dry ground-just walking, step after step, breath after breath in sleepy meditation.

Before her left foot touched a mound of dry leaves she suddenly spun around in alarm.

"What was that?" she asked cautiously.

She could have sworn to hear heavy footsteps mingled with deep animal roars, so unlike anything she had ever listened to.

"There it is…there it is again" Her senses now categorically failed to recognize the noise as she bended her body forward, with her arms crossed, towards a tight cluster of slender trees. Yet it seemed as if it was gaining in volume rapidly.

The sole recognition her brain offered was "Wolves?" Wolves? Here?

Wood was being broken. Grass was being ripped. Trees were being shaken. Suddenly realization unsettled her with the same intensity as the violated tress in the distance. It was undeniably trampling towards the cluster of trees before her.

Yet, strangely human nature abandoned her and she was not afraid.

How could she be, when the worst event that could come to pass, was the one she was eagerly anticipating the most? Like a withered bark,Hitomi remained rooted as the clattering steps and rough roars rose to an unbearable cacophony.

Suddenly, as her eyelids quickly took a break to slide over her dried eyes in comfort, a furry large creature emerged. It was too dark to see any details, yet she instantly knew that the animal was far bigger and rugged than any wolf she had ever seen. More and more flowed out as if somewhere within a very tight, secure stopper had been unwillingly released. Their heavy, advancing steps shook the ground underneath her bare feet.

"Oh my…my goodness. What is this?" she whispered in shock.

The acidic smell rotten bones and molding flesh, wafted around her like a cocoon of misery, tightly imprisoning her deeper and deeper within its iron grasp. She however remained still. Uncaring. Wishful.

The animal was before her. His yellow eyes greedily languished her tasty form in front of him. It stepped over a bark, its eyes never leaving her calm form, as it grinded its long, gray teeth in anticipation. Closer and closer it came with every passing breeze. By now it had feasted long enough on Hitomi with its hungry eyes. Sight alone does not fill a belly. When had it ever? He wanted her flesh beneath his teeth. She could hear him taking a slow step back, before he wildly charged with one surprisingly graceful jump.

Hitomi's back crashed down onto the thick roots of a tree, its hard, splintered skin digging into her ribs forcefully. Suddenly she felt long, rough hairs ripping along her bare leg. It was so close now. So close. Hitomi pulled down her eyelids.

At the same moment she felt as if fifty, long thick needled were digging themselves in and out of her leg. Over and over again. She pressed her teeth together until she was certain they should break any moment. Warm blood was rushing out of her cold leg rapidly, as if it was eager to leave its tiny vessels, as the needles continued to force themselves in and out of her tender flesh. She griped the sharp, rustling grass with both of her fragile hands and threw up her pale chin in agonizing pain.

Suddenly, the needles left her leg slowly, one after one, prolonging the hot agony. Hitomi bit down on her dried lip. Hot, copper blood flowed down her chin and trickled onto her translucent throat.

Turning her head to the right, the long green blades still between her fingers, Hitomi watched the animal come closer and closer toward her face. A warm drop of blood trickled down from her neck onto her shivering chest. The wolf opened its long mouth; the foul smell of rotten meat, dried urine and caked blood now filling the air around her. It leaned forward with an appreciative growl as if it wanted to lick away the shimmering drop of blood on her chest.

This is it. It was certainly not the way she had envisioned it to be, but it undoubtedly remained a means to an end. She did not want to ask any questions. She had done too much of that before to be curious or concerned now…now when it mattered the least.

She felt a hot reeking wind on her face. Hitomi closed her eyes…and waited. Any moment now. Any moment… But before the wolf's long teeth touched her, it ungracefully slumped on her chest-as if gravity had become particularly intense. The breath left her lungs in one slide. She tried to take another. She barely succeeded. The excruciating pain, heavy weight and maddening smell were too much for her.

Part of her brain expected it to dash around violently and then stand up again to end her misery…yet it did not. Why? God…why? Suddenly, as if gravity had smashed her, as well, deep into ground, she realized that something else was mingling with the animals now. No…not with them-against them.

"What…?" she moaned, when she realized there were people on horses, thrashing madly after the wolves in deathly earnest. It was too dark and she was too faint to distinguish any clear features, but in the looming darkness of the trees, they were strikingly similar to warriors she had seen in her childhood dreams.

"How?", she wondered now that she had seen the moon eerily reflected in shiny objects in their hands that seemed alarmingly similar to knives-very deathly, long knives. Maybe this was the very, very strange pastime of a cult she had run across near her hometown. Yes that was it…It could not be anything else. It could not and _should not_ be anything else.

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Hey People! First of all: "Thank you!" to everyone who read the last two chapters and "Thank you so, so, soooo much!" to everyone who reviewed chapter one. 

**I would love to know what you think about this chapter. One or two lines mean a lot to me _and _make my day.**

**Elda Aranel:** You were the first person who reviewed my story."Yay"and "Thank you!" I am glad that you like the descriptions in chapter one and I would love to know what you think about the new chapter. :-)

**Macky:** Thank you for taking the time to write a review. It is definitely always a great motivation to continue with a story...Tell me what you think about this chapter, please. :-)

**Syolen:** Thank you soooo much for the review. I am glad you like the story so far. I am really happy that the description ofwhat happened to her was not too abstract. Well, if you like angst then I think you will enjoy the next few chapters. Please, tell me what you think about this one. :-)

The next chapter will come very soon.


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